EPA Enforcement Cuts 300 Million Pounds of Pollution in Great Lakes Region

CHICAGO – Dec. 8, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released its annual enforcement and compliance results. Nationwide, EPA enforcement actions eliminated more than 1.8 billion pounds of harmful pollution during the past year, including 300 million pounds of pollution in the Great Lakes region.

EPA’s enforcement and compliance program protects human health and improves the quality of the nation’s air, land and water by stopping illegal pollution. EPA’s civil and criminal enforcement actions focus on violations that pose serious risks to health and the environment.

EPA Region 5 oversees enforcement efforts in the Great Lakes states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. A few of the region's recent major cases are highlighted below.

• Clean Water Settlement in Northeast Ohio: EPA and the Department of Justice settled a Clean Water Act suit with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. The settlement will keep untreated sewage out of Cleveland-area waterways and Lake Erie.

• Clean Air Settlement to Protect Public Health by Reducing Emissions: EPA reached a Clean Air Act settlement with Northern Indiana Public Service Co. in January 2011. NIPSCO is required to install state-of- the-art pollution control technology at four coal-fired power plants, which will reduce harmful air emissions by more than 68,000 tons per year.

• Illinois Company Pleads Guilty to Illegal Storage of Hazardous Waste: Honeywell International Inc. was sentenced in March 2011 to pay a criminal fine of $11.8 million for knowingly storing hazardous waste without a permit – a violation of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.